The Colors Of Music
by Lucidiux
Summary: Two times Professor Fudo had challenged his expectations with that look. One time, he succeeded. "I've never been much of an artist." Starshipping AU.


**Title:** The Colors Of Music

 **Genre:** Romance/General

 **Rating:** K+

 **Summary:** Two times Professor Fudo had challenged his expectations with that look. One time, he succeeded. _"I've never been much of an artist."_

 _Written in response to a prompt via tumblr_

* * *

Judai hardly considered himself an artist; abstract images could never seem to penetrate through the clouded haze of his mind, nor could they emulsify into the thick colors of their very nature, which he then might carelessly smear into a vague, unfocused image with his unsteady stroke. His fingers didn't extend through the tip of his pencil, constructing with careful poise the geometric patterns of seamlessly graceful prose. Rather, his thoughts conveyed themselves in an erratic jumble, scratching at the paper as a dog might through the soil in idle search for something meaningless.

There wasn't much to appreciate of a concept which had only eluded him, and he made no effort understand why it did not do the same with others. No, he didn't compare his art to the laminated copy of Claude Monet's _La Promenade_ which hung intimidatingly among its furthermore impressive counterparts. Nor did he feel woefully inadequate in the face of interpreting Shakespeare's literary masterpiece, _Romeo and Juliet._

He had never been, and would likely never be, an artist.

"Music? What about it?"

"No offense, Aniki, I just didn't think you would be the type to take a class like that…"

Judai could recall his response as he frowned, curious as to why the class seemed so far fetched for him, almost as clearly as he could recall his friend's tentative response.

"Well...music is an art. It's usually a class you only take if you're majoring in something like that..."

 _Music is an art._

He supposed that might have been true enough; it seemed that the careful composition of complex notes and aesthetically pleasing tunes qualified as something more abstract. Alas, he had consulted with his counselor, and upon less than careful consideration opted to sign up for whatever class provided enough credits for his upcoming graduation. He had never much particularly cared for music-of course, he enjoyed listening to it-though, it was the favorable alternative to the more intellectually demanding variety of courses he'd had to choose from.

How difficult could it be?

He had been late that day; the class had been due to start twenty minutes prior to the time, which he hadn't bothered to check until the words "game over" flashed tauntingly across the screen of his computer. He had laid back in his chair, running a hand over his face as he attempted to wipe away the settling exhaustion from an unwitting all-nighter. It wasn't until he took a moment to indulge in his temporary refuge from the sun that he realized the late hours of the night had long since blended into a new morning.

Now, he was standing in front of them, reaping the consequences.

" _Judai Yuki…"_

That had been the first time he heard it; It wasn't the name his parents repeatedly wore out to chastise him for his plummeting grades and reckless behavior. It wasn't the name his friends used to refer to him jokingly (often at his own expense), and it certainly wasn't the name his classmates whispered among themselves even then as he stood awkwardly above them.

No, this name pertained to someone else entirely, as though it belonged in the lyrics of a poetic song verse. It was a tune; a dulcet string of sounds woven with gentle, muted colors. It sounded like the vague memory of an echoing wind chime, one which could be made louder as the drifting of winds grew more forceful in their emotion.

"Y-Yea...sorry, I guess I lost track of time." He had flashed the professor a sheepish smile, which in turn elicited a muted wave of giggles from their audience. His attention however was quite stolen, as he watched a pair of compelling, cobalt eyes flicker up from the roster fastened to his clip board.

"You can sit down, Mr. Yuki. Luckily, we were only in the middle of introducing ourselves to the class." His dismissal had left the student strangely breathless; it was as though every word had it's own note, it's own place in an uncanny melody. They were words, only words, but as the professor spoke he could only imagine how they might sound if they were sung to him instead. "Since you were elsewhere, my name is Professor Fudo. I'm a composer, and I teach a variety of music classes here at the university."

"Tell me," he began slowly, beginning with a drawn out note, "I was just asking the rest of the class what they felt they were most passionate about in music."

A thick blanket of silence had befallen the students, the one in particular hesitating as he peered briefly around the room. It wasn't as one expected to see a classroom, particularly for a subject so rooted in history and design. The posters of obligatory composers such as Beethoven and Mozart had been omitted. Rather, a collage of laminated photos and crinkled paintings hung in their stead, painting the walls with an abstract wave of clashing colors; in fact, they reminded him of the waves which might accompany the sound of music itself.

There was a pause as his eyes returned to the professor, who waited patiently for his answer.

"Er...I'm not really sure yet. I mean, I'm not much of an artist…"

Those cobalt eyes, veiled with a peculiar look which rose to meet his own in that moment expressed to him something much more of the contrary.

He wouldn't see the professor so much as look at him twice in such a manner again until midterms.

His grades had been slipping. Well, alright, he supposed that was a bit of a lie; a rock didn't plummet off the cliff if it was already nestled firmly into the ground beneath it. Still, the encroaching terror of having to make up for yet another failed credit was enough to spur him into a sudden and spontaneous gesture of desperation.

"No."

"No?" He had repeated, a hint of ambiguity teetering on the edge of his question. His professor merely turned on a heel, refocusing on the detailed web of musical notes and that laid jumbled and disconnected in front of him, like a puzzle gradually merging into a much larger picture. In any other situation, he might have noticed the way his fingertips were stained with various ink splotches, or how they appeared to match the smudged fingerprints which blurred a few of the lines, making some notes vague and difficult to make out among the chaos. He might have noticed the way that his professor's brows creased with such careful attention, one might've thought he was a trained surgeon, as opposed to a renowned, prodigital musician.

He tried not to beat himself up for, in fact, noticing all of the above.

"Why not?" Judai had pressed with a small frown.

There was a pregnant pause, as though the professor were pondering something particularly complexing. That was a pattern which the brunet had begun to discern over a better part of the semester; he always appeared to be focused, so narrowed in on whatever presented itself in front of him: a string of notes in a collage of thousands, or a particular key that seemed off to him in a melody which consisted of a multitude.

Judai when his professor's attention was focused solely on him, almost as though he were reading the other-a single note that was off beat in some sort of grand melody.

He wasn't aware he'd been holding his breath until his professor spoke again. "Mr. Yuki, there are many things I can teach you, if only you'd put forth the effort. Unfortunately, devotion is not one of them."

He couldn't see the professor's entire profile, but he could imagine the disappointment shrouded behind his usual veil of particularity.

"I don't see what that has to do with helping me out a little here so I can pass…" The words had been uttered between a two breaths; one which began in resentment and frustration and another which ended with a deflating indisposition.

Professor Fudo appeared to sense this, as his attention returned to the student who stood in a manner that, despite their being the only ones in the empty classroom, appeared to fill the space with his zoned out gaze and awkward, hovering pose. He deliberately rose his voice above the noise of Judai's disgruntled thoughts.

"Judai, do you believe in the concept of a person possessing powers unique to themselves?"

The student blinked, rattled from his musings as he paused for a moment to consider the question. "You mean like, super powers?"

"Well, I suppose so...though, I'm talking more so about an individual's most notable skill or talent, and how that makes them special, or unique."

Judai frowned; he wasn't quite sure how the explanation differentiated, though he nodded in deft understanding.

"When you walked into my classroom on the first day Judai, there was a power I could see in you."

He could vaguely recall what his emotions were in that precise moment, but he imagined it might have been something quite similar to the colors which blended into one another on the walls that surrounded them like a chaotic hurricane. Confusion, he would tentatively say, might have been among them.

"What do you mean?" He had frowned, scratching at the back of his head as though the action in itself might provide it's own, miraculous explanation.

The professor withdrew himself from the sheet music before tucking it safely into a rather bulging folder. He slipped it carefully into his briefcase, before approaching the befuddled student with that similar look.

"Passion." His answer was simple, but the firmness in his tone could not be dismissed as he lured his student's gaze. Judai wondered for a moment if the professor were speaking for himself, as passion, he mused, seemed to be buried so shallow beneath that starry sky in the elder's eyes.

"Passion?" He'd repeated, a frown pulling at the corners of his lips this time, "I guess so...but I'm not really much of an artist…"

A barely soundless chuckle was his second reply. The first, he noted, as he had remembered distinctly, was the look which had twisted him so curiously before.

"Aren't you?" The voice was gentle, but in the manner he was accustomed to hearing when the professor addressed him. Instead, his candid expression had been replaced with a smile which whispered of a faint amusement. It was as though the melody had shifted; an even chorus giving birth to a new verse which seemed almost intended to seize him by the heart and catch him off guard.

"You must have forgotten how you made an entire room of socially adept adults giggle, merely by the way you spoke."

"Er...well, I-"

"Every artist shows charisma in one manner or another: a painter in the way they blend their emotions into something unmistakably appealing to the eye. A writer in their manner of speaking with unique conviction to an audience, demanding their attention through artful prose and carefully manipulative sonnets."

" _...A musician in a manner that allows them to breath music into the hearts of those who are willing to listen."_

It seemed like in that moment, in a single breath, the professor had managed to steal his own away completely.

It was later that night when he had resolved to return, after a particularly long night filled with tossing and turning and the professor's words ringing through his ears like a broken record playing itself in a taunting loop.

 _If only you'd put forth the effort…_

It was about an hour after midnight when he had resigned himself to a late night walk in the hopes that it might bring him to the point of exhaustion where the professor's words could not follow him so determinedly. Whether by ironic chance or the cruel, prophetic hand of God, he'd found himself wandering the halls of the art building in an alert daze. It seemed as though the closer he wandered toward the music room, the louder his thoughts became, like following the echo of a distant sound.

Somehow, in the midst of his sleepless ideation and subconscious roaming, he'd found himself sitting in front of the keyboard which he'd been assigned to earlier that semester, and a half-blank sheet of paper with sentences of tentatively placed bars and notes gradually filling it's corners. His fingers dragged across the keys, prodding for the missing the sounds that would fill the gap between the bridge of broken and disconnected notes he'd been fondling for a better part of the night. An hour more must have passed before he hunched over the keys, twisting his fingers the mounds of tousled hair. His head was swimming with too many fractions, too many disconnected melodies that he barely registered the keyboard's bellowing objection as his elbows hit the keys with a dull thunk.

As the student's eyes grew suddenly heavy with an encroaching exhaustion, he began to wonder if perhaps his professor had misplaced his unprecedented confidence in the student all along.

"You might want to try a b flat on the second bar."

Peeking through the cracks of his fingers, Judai felt his posture straighten as he sensed Professor Fudo leaning over his shoulder. Any debility of fatigue or sign of wavering consciousness was consumed by a stiff awareness that caused his skin to tingle where he could feel with acute sensitivity the elder's breath brushing against his ear. His cheeks grew abnormally warm despite the chill of a late autumn night permeating through thin, glass windows.

"Try something like this…" the professor murmured into his ear as his arms wrapped around the student's shoulders. Judai noted that the elder's fingers were still stained with splotches of ink as he placed them above the student's own which hovered hesitantly above the keyboard. He pressed them down, manipulating them as he molded their hands into one instrument, leading them in an elaborate waltz across the keys.

The tune he played was the same one that the brunet had toiled over for the past few hours, however, the notes sounded much more crisp and precise; his fingers moved deliberately, assured in their direction as they wove for the first time a seamless and harmonious tune previously laid asunder by the brunet's tentative, more sloppy renderance. He could only watch as the professor took his hastily scribbled notes and amateurish composition turning it into a masterpiece of aesthetic rhythms and smooth, flowing sounds right before his eyes.

He wanted until the the last note, which was purposefully drawn out as the professor kept their hands hovering deliberately above the keys, to let out the breath he'd been unintentionally holding.

"I thought you weren't gonna help me." He muttered half heartedly as the professor withdrew his hands. The brunet in effect tried not to let the sudden shiver that ran down his spine show as the cool air rushed in to replace the warm ghost of the other's touch which lingered behind.

"No, I _couldn't_ help you, because you didn't want to be helped." Professor Fudo corrected as he drew back, before joining the student as he sat on the other end of the bench. "It seems that you changed your mind tonight, however."

The brunet blinked down at the keyboard, before finally turning his head to meet the professor's powerful gaze, which this time he was prepared for as he listened with uncharacteristic mindfulness. "Judai, art is an expression, you have to express how you feel through the sounds of your music."

"I'm not really sure what you mean…"

"Look around the room then, Judai." He gestured, leaning back so that the brunet could follow his instructions as the they rose their eyes to the collage of colors wrapped around the walls. "Think about the moments where your emotions were the most intense...the ones which left the deepest impression on your heart, or mind: a personal achievement, a first kiss…"

The student blinked, taking the professor's advice to heart for a moment as he attempted to focus on the raw emotions which the colors on the wall projected. He noted the way which certain shades of reds and blues appeared to clash, synthesizing into variants of purple in some areas. He noted the manner that some of them dominated others: a striking shade of red spread above a muted background of yellow. He wondered if this was the desired effect of modern art which had previously eluded him. Regardless, he allowed them to influence his train of thought for a moment, feeling them pull on emotions which he had not previously assigned any measure of cogency to.

"What about...a story?" He muttered, blinking as he let his attention sink down from the walls and back to his professor, who regarded him with some measure of surprise. He felt a rush of something pleasant through his veins; the effect of his words on the elder was oddly satisfying in a manner that he could neither make sense of or convey.

"A story?" He repeated, prompting a smile to tug on the student's lips as he nodded in response.

"Yea, it's about a college student and his really cryptic music teacher."

His impromptu summary evoked a soft giggle from the professor, which oddly served to enhance the inexplicable rush of excitement swelling within the student. He realized in that moment that despite the hours which he'd spent listening half-consciously to his professor's lectures that he had never once heard the other laugh or give any indication of amusement.

The realization caused a warm glow to ignite in his core.

The professor followed up his train of thoughts with a soft smile, "Of course."

He could've sworn he saw the elder's eyes glisten for a moment as the glow of the moon penetrated through the windows, illuminating that look which had both stumped and captivated him twice before, and did no less then, as he felt his creativity flow under their invested watch.

He could try to explain it, but then, _he had never been much of an artist._

* * *

I was going to have them kiss at some point originally but this was actually just supposed to be a drabble, before it turned into a short fic, and then a full blown oneshot. So, I decided to just leave it at that. Maybe some day if I get enough positive feedback on it I'll explore where this could've gone in terms of their romantic lives.

But anyway, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it, and I'm always looking for critiques so please make sure to leave your feedback!


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